병렬구속 세계의 K-시네마: 2004-2025 한국영화 지형에서 본 2020년대의 징후들 = K-cinema in a World of Parallel Bind: Symptoms of the 2020s in the Landscape of Korean Cinema 2004-2025

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper begins from an attempt to examine the nature of K-cinema in the 2020s, a period in which global interest in Korean film has exploded. In the last several years, the world has experience a condense period of change, with such developments as: the acceleration of deglobalization driven by strategic competition among major powers; the dominant expansion of disembodied globalization propelled by digital technologies; the COVID-19 pandemic and a transnational ecological crisis; and, with the growth of uncertainty, intensified anxiety among global citizens, along with the resulting spread of tribalism and political polarization. In this context, Korea is becoming a society at the global forefront of the expansion and internalization of efficiency, speed, dynamism, competition, isolation, exclusion, and hate. This study argues that the conditions confronting citizens amid these broader currents are shifting from a state of “double bind” to one of “parallel bind,” and examines how this state resonates affectively with Korean cinema. Taking as its premise that films which either achieve a certain level of commercial success or attract large-scale capital are products of their entanglement with the contemporary world, this paper traces recent changes through Korean films that serve as indicators of such conditions. To do so, it conducts a full survey of 490 Korean films released over the 22 years from 2004 to 2025 that drew more than one million viewers, compiling data on the occupations, social status, and relationships of their major characters. Through this analysis, the paper finds that the dominant narrative tendencies of K-cinema in the 2020s were already taking full shape in the mid-2010s, and identifies two especially prominent trends: 1) the return of the state and a growing reliance upon it, and 2) the frequent adoption of nostalgia-based themes of temporal and spatial return. The paper additionally traces the paths by which these tendencies have become formalized.